


Birds Beneath the Desert

by cridecoeur



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cridecoeur/pseuds/cridecoeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is a treasure hunter on post-Apocalyptic Earth, turning a profit by leading worshippers of the Old World on expeditions for broken down tech and ruined pieces of the past. On an expedition past Darwin’s Partition, into the Ash Deserts that are rumored to house monsters and a hundreds-of-years-old curse, Sherlock and his party become ensnared by the magic of the Lost People, pulled into a fantasy world hiding just beneath the surface of the deserts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, before I start the notes for this story (which is a WiP, be warned), I just want to say JFC, I'm really sorry to anyone who was exposed to _13: Soldier_. You now know why I am not allowed near computers when I've had fewer than three hours of sleep. Because I write utter nonsense and then think it's a good idea to post it. Then I reread it when I get more sleep and think, jfc, I sound _drunk_ and _illiterate_. Usually I write original fiction, which no one reads, so I can just take it down and pretend it never happened, but this time some unfortunate ninety-odd people were exposed to it. SORRY, GUYS, I'LL TRY NOT TO DO THAT AGAIN.
> 
> Okay, now for this fic. I gotta tell you, I really like it, which is unusual. I love post-Apocalyptic stories, and I've always wanted to try my hand at one. This is sort of steam-punk, in the end, sort of fantasy. It's weird, but seriously, it's post-Apocalyptic, do you expect normalcy? I did not think so. Also, nobody gets blown up except people who, uh, already got blown up, so there's that. I have slightly changed my MO?

The birds left London, after the war, and did not come back, not for a hundred years, as if there were a curse suddenly lifted - or suddenly placed. Now, they flooded the streets at night, flocks of them, blackbirds hovering over the city, then settling on crumbled buildings, rusted husks of cars, in between slap-dash wooden structures, in a city where the veins of electricity, of water, of paved streets were long forgotten. There were whisperings of magic, of birds that became people, that looted the city at night, that carried away anyone foolish enough to walk the streets after dark.

Idiocy, Sherlock thought; those stories had not frightened him, even as a child, even less so than whispers of monster’s and a curse on the Ash Deserts, just the other side of the Partition, from whence, they said, no one returned. But let them cower in their hovels at night and leave the streets to him, let their superstitions freeze them in place; let them remained trapped in their city, this placed of dust and shattered glass, while he made his name in the Deserts.

Sherlock’s reflection in the mirror was stark where the candlelight cut across the room, flickering, the hollows of his eyes pronounced; he appeared almost wraith-like. On the table lay an ancient pair of scissors, metal, which he sharpened himself as they went dull. Like the ticking clock on the mantelpiece, in a hollowed out mausoleum of a building, all marble and missing windows, a house that the Holmes had laid claim on for three-hundred years and would not relinquish - like that, the scissors were a curiosity piece, but an enviable one. Any working piece of the Old World was coveted, by fools who worshipped what they did not understand.

Taking the scissors in hand, Sherlock pulled on one long black curl and began to cut. His hair fell away, littering the floor. His concentration on the mirror, he did not hear Mycroft’s approaching footsteps, but saw him, in the mirror when he entered the room.

“Yes, yes, warnings,” Sherlock said. “Don’t bother. I’ve already forgotten everything you’re going to say.”

Mycroft leaned forward, on his umbrella - another curiosity piece, one he insisted on wielding in every situation, though the cloth was in tatters, hardly remaining, the metal frame obvious, an Old World fossil.

“I’ve simply come to wish you luck,” Mycroft said. Sherlock eyed him, suspiciously, in the mirror. “I have no illusions of my ability to stop you, Sherlock.” He did not look half-grim, though, when he said, “Do be careful.”

“Careful is boring,” Sherlock said, then turned back to the mirror, cutting away the rest of his hair, until the curls were short-cropped; he could hope that the ash would not cling so tenaciously in the desert, would not threaten his sight at every turn - no more than the wind, at least, the sudden storms.

“Yes,” Mycroft said, sighing. “I do know your opinion on preserving your own life.”

Sherlock set the scissors down and reached for his goggles, also laying on the table. He pulled them on, let them rest at his hair line; he would be fool to trust his vision to the mercies of the wind, though he could hope he would not need them at all times. Constantly brushing the ash away would be _trying_.

He turned and took up his last pack, carefully prepared, the tools he would need tucked neatly into place. Treasure was not always easily gained, but that was all the better for him; easily gained was seldom worthwhile, and he was one of the few who would seek the truly worthwhile.

Mycroft stopped him in the doorway, when he tried to pass.

“ _Move_ ,” Sherlock said; Mycroft gave him a look down his nose, a look that said he was hardly impressed. Sherlock made an impatient noise, and the faintest of smiles flitted across Mycroft’s face.

“Take these,” Mycroft said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out - jewelry. Sherlock blinked: a silver amulet studded with black andradite and an agate ring. Protection and endurance. Mycroft was not usually one to indulge in superstition. Sherlock imagined he was only trying to be vexing; he was far more likely to indulge in that.

“I’m not taking those,” Sherlock said, “I don’t need them.”

“You’re not leaving without them,” Mycroft said, with that falsely mild look he always wore. Sherlock glared him down, but Mycroft was impossible to intimidate, and a physical confrontation would be mere nonsense. Sherlock made a scornful noise but snatched the amulet and ring from his hand.

“Happy?” he said.

“No,” Mycroft said. “But that’s not going to change.”

Sherlock made another scornful, impatient noise, and made a motion that meant, _move, move_ now. Finally, Mycroft stepped out of his way, and Sherlock stalked down the hall, past windows-frames covered with moth-eaten curtains that fluttered in the wind, a house settled in dust and a ruined past.

Outside, a chill bit the air; fall was approaching winter, and, now, the deserts would not be baking. Sherlock walked straight through the nightly street-hauntings, people who dissipated on touch, a vanishing, atoms to atmosphere. The past would not rest, no matter how many times she was buried, and, now, old players acted out the last days of the war, ghosts that sometimes ran or cowered or imitated their very deaths, the days the bombs dropped, and the end came for London.

Sherlock had no time for the past and did not even pause to watch a play that ended long ago.

Tethered on the street was Sherlock’s Spanish Mustang, the horse that had seen him through long expeditions, and, now, would see him through the very bleakness of the desert. Sherlock loaded his last pack upon him, then swung himself up onto the saddle. He looked back to find Mycroft standing in the doorway of the manor, leaning upon his umbrella, still. Sherlock did not pause, but turned his horse toward the Partition and his party and rode.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ground began to tremble, caving inward, ash falling away, until a towering glass spider clambered out from beneath the surface, long legs skittering, body glimmering in the soft light of the moon, of the forest around them.
> 
> “I am reconsidering the possibility that I have lost my mind,” Sherlock said.
> 
> “Yeah,” John said. “That’s probably just going to get worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, before the notes for this part. Hahaha, I legitimately cannot believe how many kudos/comments there are on Lumos, you are all wonderful people but possibly the same kind of cracked I am. Actually I'm surprised the last BBtD part got as many kudos as it did, seeing as it is essentially a chapter about Sherlock cutting his own hair. /o\ I had a vision~ guys. Probably I should see someone about that.
> 
> There's a little bit more set-up in this chapter, but then we start getting into the meat of the story. The beginning of the meat. Whatever, the part I actually really like (I hate set up, I hate it so much). This story gets EXCEPTIONALLY WEIRD before the end, but I sort of warned for that last time. If you didn't believe me I am about to prove it to you.

The men and women who traveled with Sherlock were a slender minority in New London - a handful of adventure-seekers among a city of superstitious fools; they did not possess quite his infamy, but with each expedition they rode on, they came closer, still. Sherlock had dealt with two of these three particular travelers, before - Molly, who worked embalming the dead and had the unfortunate tendencies to _fawn_ over Sherlock, and Sebastian, to whom he would not turn his back for long - the third, Moriarty, was an anomaly, a man only recently arrived in New London, but who had quickly endeared himself to both. Sherlock knew little about him, but his behavior, thus far, had been typically _dull_.

As Sherlock drew closer to the Partition, his horse's hoofbeats a constant tempo, he saw them, all three, gathered at the single gate that saw passage from New London into the desert. On the other side of the Partition were rocky hills, a bundling of caves from which the blackbirds came to haunt the city at night.

He watched, as he always did, to see what they would tell him. Molly wore a wide-brimmed hat, fashionable, supposedly to shade her eyes from the sun, but the hat was new, worn perhaps only once before, and any fool would know that riding into the desert wearing it would also ruin it. It was also more ostentatious than her usual style, not something she would wear of her own volition; the rest of her clothes were practical, plain. A gift, then, one she felt pressed to wear - perhaps one she did not even like, if she was willing to risk it to the tender mercies of the desert - likely because the man who had given it to her was in their company.

Now, the man - Sherlock need not look any further than Moriarty’s position on his horse to know that he was the one who had given it to her. His body turned unconsciously in her direction, much like flowers that turned their faces to the sun, even though she was not speaking, was not even looking at him, was instead, watching Sherlock’s approach. Sherlock also need not look any further than his posture on the horse to know their relationship had not yet reached the physical and likely never would. Sherlock, in fact, would have a better chance of pursuing a physical relationship with him, or Sebastian.

Sherlock immediately erased that particular thought.

As Sherlock drew beside them, Molly raised one hand, reflexively, to her impractical hat, self-conscious. Sebastian shifted on his horse, settling his air rifle more comfortably against his back, the strap more comfortably across his chest - a man who actually believed the rumors of monsters in the desert held little esteem in Sherlock’s mind, and Sebastian was one of them. Likely he had some fool notion about bringing one back as a prize. Moriarty tilted his head to one side, that damning position on his horse becoming more pronounced.

“The famous Sherlock Holmes,” he said; his sound had a foreign lilt to it, almost soft. “What an honor to finally meet you.”

“If only I could say the same,” Sherlock said. Molly instantly flushed with embarrassment, and Moriarty’s eyes darkened − the look was not one of offense, but something more subtle. Sherlock did not take the time to decipher what it might be; he found emotion a terribly dull subject for study.

Sherlock took his compass from his pocket, not an Old World compass, but something far more useful, something which had never failed to lead him to the useless sort of treasures the New world so fervently sought; it’s guts were clockwork, it’s hand ever spinning, only to settle at his need.

“Come, now,” Sherlock said, as the compass picked an appropriate direction. “It appears we are not in need of introductions.” He lead his horse past them; he did not turn to see if they followed him, but let their horses’ hoofbeats tell him when they had unfrozen from place.

The guards at the Partition made a mockery of true competence. They seemed to have been chosen particularly for their belief in the whisperings surrounding the desert. Near all of them watched him with looks that said clearly _you’re going to die out there_ ; some even seemed to say, _I hope you die out there_ , the ones who dealt with him most frequently. At the gate, Sally stopped them.

“Hold it right, there, freak,” she said. Sherlock looked down at her from atop his horse.

“Sally,” Sherlock said, “You look radiant, as always.” Sally peered up him, suspiciously, as if suspecting he was mocking her. One would think she’d moved past suspicion by now and into _knowledge_.

“Let’s see your papers,” she said, and Sherlock sighed as if this were all very _trying_ , but pulled them from the inner pocket of his coat, unfolded them, and handed them to her. She took them, perusing them longer than possibly required, likely looking for some loophole over which she could detain him. In the end, she simply scowled and handed them back to him.

“Go on, then,” she said, “Get out of here.”

“Do try not to miss me too much,” Sherlock said, leading his horse past her.

#

They were not long in the desert, when the blackbirds began to flock to them, appearing from caves and crevices and hovering constantly overhead, and with them came the ghosts, as if one could not appear without the other, as if this were not a spectacle of the night, but a spectacle of conjoined presence. Many of these too were gruesome enough, if one took time to care about events near 300-years passed. But some - some were tender or triumphant, lovers cradled in each others arms, a man fighting back monsters and prevailing, a woman holding a child, rocking it gently in her arms. Others were simply insensible, children playing beside houses made of towering crystal, a man riding on a spider so enormous, it towered over their party - it also appeared to be composed entirely of glass. The people pictured, even the children, had dark ink winding across their skin, peaking coyly from beneath their clothes, twisting over arms and necks and, sometimes, faces.

There was naked fear on Molly’s face. Sebastian was tugging at the strap of his air rifle, as if only wishing he could drop where they stood. Moriarty - Moriarty’s expression was more subtle, some measure of fascination, a keen intelligence Sherlock had not seen in him before - this appeared to be one of those subtleties that sometimes slipped through Sherlock’s fingers, and he watched the shifting of Moriarty’s face, quietly studying him.

As the day went on, the wind picked up, until Molly’s hat was entirely, predictably ruined, and all four of them had their goggles firmly fixed in place, ash streaking their features, sooty on their clothes, painting them in stripes of grey and black.

Sherlock consulted his compass often - the interior gears ticked along, constantly, the needle wavering, then settling into place: the greatest finds were often the most subtly detected. What towns there had been here were obliterated or fossilized, in firestorms the likes of which the world had not seen before the war and did not see, again, after. The greatest surprise came, though, when they rode further inland, where the desert should have been most desolate.

That was when they came upon the mushrooms. Not ordinary mushrooms, huddling in the shade, able to be kicked aside or harvested with ease. No, these mushrooms were… extraordinary, the first a full head taller even than Sherlock, the gills so wide, he could fit his hand within them. The flock of birds which had hovered since they’d crossed the partition grew larger and larger, as they progressed further into what appeared to be a forest of mushrooms, until they were a cloud that cut out the sun, light appearing only in strange shifts and swings. The mushrooms though, glowed, a luminescence than shown from within.

When they settled, for the night, it was not because the sun had set - little could they tell: the birds were now a veritable storm - but because the horses would go no further. Still, Sherlock’s compass pointed him in the same direction

“They’re a bit… unsettling, aren’t they?” Molly said, looking up at the cloud. Her mood was still far more acute than _unsettled_ , though, true fear every-present on her face, hands twisting unconsciously in her lap, pale beneath the ash dusting her face. Sherlock turned away to resume his inspection of the mushrooms. They were far more fascinating, standing in defiance of the very laws of nature, in a world that could not possibly support them: there was no food source that he could detect, and the soil was barren, hardly even soil, anymore, more ash and salt than anything. Ghosts wove in and out between them, living out their lives and, occasionally, their deaths.

Sherlock took longer than was acceptable to notice that the camp had fallen completely silent, distracted as he was, and that the birds had settled all around them; it was, in fact, night, the moon’s soft glow settling over the forest. Sherlock turned to find that all three of his companions were laid out on the ground, entirely insensible. They did not seem to have settled intentionally into sleep, but had simply dropped where they sat or stood, crumpled on the ground.

Even Sherlock would admit to feeling… unsettled, at that. He crept around them and then knelt down to inspect Molly, who was laid out on her back, legs twisted together and arms awkwardly bent. When Sherlock touched her throat, her heartbeat was strong and steady. She was pallid, but not unhealthily so, and her breathing never faltered. She appeared to have simply fallen suddenly and insensibly to sleep.

When Sherlock looked up, again, he was no longer in the forest.

The moon still shown, but now it shown only through open windows, past gauzy curtains, over smooth marble in a long, high-ceilinged hall. Sherlock need look no further than that to know he was in the home his family had long claimed. He stood up slowly, movements careful. Either he had gone suddenly and completely out of his mind, or there was something more subtle at work. Sudden insanity seemed unlikely, but he could deduce no other, logical reason.

He would so hate to be wrong about the desert.

He stalked down the hallway, peering into rooms as he went, until he reached his own, with its burnished mirror and four-post bed, settled under extravagant linen and velvet. He paced the room, familiar dimensions all the same. He walked over to the vanity with its mirror and picked the familiar scissors up from the tabletop, turning them over. When he looked up, there was a man in the mirror.

Sherlock spun around.

“You know,” the man said, “Most people are cowering in fear by now.”

“I am not most people,” Sherlock said, automatically.

“Apparently,” the man said, mouth quirking up slightly. He was stout with short, sandy hair and steady blue eyes, his face subtly lined. Just like the desert specters, dark tattoos twisted over his arms, all the way down to his hands, twining around his fingers. He could not be much older than Sherlock, himself, but he had the sort of gravity in his bearing of a man who had seen much of the world and been disappointed.

“And who are you?” Sherlock said.

The man paused a moment before he said, “Prometheus.”

“You are an abysmal liar,” Sherlock said. “It’s insulting.”

The man’s eyebrows raised slightly. “How do you figure?”

“Your expression is stiff,” Sherlock said, “limited to your the movement of your mouth. You are not a timid man, but you do not make eye contact. Also, your timing is entirely off.”

The man’s eyebrow’s raised further.

“Now,” Sherlock said. “Why don’t we try that again, without lying.”

The man watched him steadily for a moment.

“John,” he said, finally. “John Watson.”

“A pleasure to meet you, John,” Sherlock said.

“You’re awfully calm for someone who’s trapped in here,” John said.

“I am never trapped,” Sherlock said.

“Oh, yeah?” John said. “Know how to get yourself out?”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, and spun around, again, slamming his fist into the mirror with as much as force as he could muster.

Around them the walls and ceiling of the manor cracked, fine lines appearing and growing, spreading, until the scene shattered and fell down around them, just as the mirror splintered and crashed to the table top, the floor.

The forest reappeared around them and with it Sherlock’s sleeping companions. Beyond them, where there had been a swarm of blackbirds, there were now people crouching among the mushrooms, faces illuminated by their internal glow. They were carrying what could not be anything but weapons, though their forms were not familiar.

“Ah,” Sherlock said, “I see you’ve brought an army to a fist fight.”

“How,” John said, “could you possibly have known to do that.”

“Obvious,” Sherlock said, shortly, studying the men and woman around them. They too, were covered in the same winding ink that spilled over John’s skin. Some looked grim, others simply curious.

“It’s never been obvious to anyone else,” John said.

Sherlock turned to regard him. “You did not appear until I looked in the mirror,” Sherlock said, “though I suspect you were present all along. Likewise, everything in the manor looked exactly as it should, but the burnishing of the mirror was not the same - the color was not as it should have been. The reflection in the glass was also opposite of what it should have been, and objects did not appear the same. The mirror was distorting the room, and so, the most likely object for the source of the illusion. Breaking the illusion was a simple of destroying the offending object.”

“As I told you,” Sherlock finished, “I am not most people.”

“That,” John said, slowly, and Sherlock braced himself against the inevitable, “was bloody incredible.”

Sherlock blinked in surprise.

“Not,” he said, “The usual response.”

“What’s the usual response?” John said.

“Nothing so complementary, I assure you,” Sherlock said.

“Right, well,” John said, “you’re going to have to come with us.”

“It would appear,” Sherlock said, looking around at the gathered crowd, “that I have no other choice.”

“Not really,” John said, mouth quirking up, slightly. Sherlock noticed that, though his expressions shifted, no emotion beyond somberness ever truly reached his eyes. They remained ever sober, ever lined. He turned away from Sherlock, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled.

The ground began to tremble, caving inward, ash falling away, until a towering glass spider clambered out from beneath the surface, long legs skittering, body glimmering in the soft light of the moon, of the forest around them.

“I am reconsidering the possibility that I have lost my mind,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s probably just going to get worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, I promise my posting rate will not always be so fucking obnoxious, but I finished a lot of stuff at once. My intention was to space them out to non-obnoxious intervals, but I'm super impatient, a day apart was really all I could manage. I WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE NOW. Actually, that might be a lie. /o\ I've got another exceptionally stupid ficlet on my hard drive that I might post (although those of you who liked Lumos will probably like it I guess, seeing as it is from that universe). ALRIGHT, JESUS, GONE NOW.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, let me know when you’ve got that all figured out, then,” John said. “And I’ll lock you up, after.”
> 
> “You are an absurd human being,” Sherlock said.
> 
> “Guess we’re a matched set,” John said, then simply walked away leaving Sherlock to stare after him and then to sort through the utter nonsense that was his apparent dwelling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, this has been the shitty week from Hell, and writing has been the one thing that made it less shitty. So I've got another chapter of _Birds_ for you! Or, well, for the one person who I know is actually reading this, ffff, I'm sure everyone else would have preferred more _Lumos_. But like I said it was the shitty week from Hell, and I simply was not in a crack fic state of mind. Maybe after the weekend, guys, we'll see. Right now, more strangeness and more sort of fantasy/steam-punk/whatever the hell you'd categorize this as! Good times.

The birds had entirely disappeared from the sky.

Somehow, while Sherlock has not been troubled by their presence, he was troubled by their absence, likely because the implications were both absurd - that somehow these people’s presence regulated the bird’s presence, as well - and also made Sherlock look as if his misjudgment of the desert was even greater. As if the mass hallucinations, mushrooms, and glass spiders had not been enough. He was feeling particularly vexed.

They were all perched upon the spiders now - Sebastian’s air rifle had been taken from him, and their horses led away, but otherwise they had not been restrained. The implications about their level of threat to their captors would have been insulting, were they not so drastically out-manned and overpowered. Any attempt at escape would be lunatic.

That did not stop Sebastian from trying.

He made it no more than 10 yards before fire erupted from out of the ground around him, effectively cutting off his egress. Molly screamed in a hair-raising way, and Sebastian fell to the ground, arms raised protectively over his face - Sherlock could not entirely interpret the emotions that flickered across Moriarty’s face before dropping off. The realm of emotion had always seemed such folly that the necessity for its interpretation now was vexing.

The fire retreated.

This time, Sebastian was restrained.

#

The journey seemed tediously long before they arrived at a series of caves, huddled low against the ground. John dismounted from the spider, Sherlock having no chance to follow before the spider was burrowing back into the ground, leaving him effectively sprawled across the ash, in a manner that was not particularly dignified. The corner of John’s mouth quirked up.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding particularly sorry. “Should have warned you.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, “You do seem troubled by your mistake.”

John’s mouth twitched, again, and he shrugged. “Call it a learning experience,” he said. He offered a hand to Sherlock, and Sherlock took it only because his attention was caught suddenly by the ink winding around John’s hand. When he clasped it, he was disappointed to find that there was no difference in texture between the skin covered in ink and that left bare. They were simply tattoos and nothing more. Their design, upon closer inspection, was curious, less jagged tribalism than Sherlock had first believed and more floral. He could not yet interpret the meaning of that, but he tucked the fact away for reflection later.

“Come on,” John said. “We’ve got a ways to go, still.”

The tunnels which led down from the caves, when they entered them, were at first cramped, low-ceilinged and allowing for the passage of no more than two people at a time, walking side-by-side. Sherlock and his fellows were kept at the center of the line. Sebastian’s restraints had been cut away, likely because dragging him along was more trouble than it was worth when the press of bodies and the narrow tunnels themselves bound him just as effectively. The tunnels wound slowly down, and as the depths became greater, the tunnels became wider and the ceilings rose, until they were walking not through tunnels but through twisting caverns, which split and split and split again. Anyone who did not know their way through them would become easily and hopelessly lost.

Next, the floor beneath them and the walls around them became damp, and then pools of clear water began to appear, seeming deceptively shallow.

The tunnels seemed to come to life.

What first appeared were the spiders - not towering giants as the others had been, but small and fragile, even the greatest no larger than the palm of Sherlock’s hand. They skittered along, winding in between tramping feet, somehow never stepped upon. Next came more mushrooms, starting small and becoming larger and larger the further they went - these too cast a soft internal glow, which soon threw enough light that the torches which had been lit at the beginning of the tunnels were snuffed out, so that each person was eerily illuminated. There were also - for lack of a better term - great flowers that grew up from the floor, their blossoms nearly brushing the ceiling, some with off-shoots that looked to produce fruit or, at least, something that looked very much like it.

Thick foliage grew up around them, until it gave way, impossibly, to trees, among which crawled and climbed the strangest animals which Sherlock had ever laid eyes upon.

“Told you it’d get worse,” John said suddenly, and Sherlock realized the look upon his face must have been… revealing.

“You’re enjoying this,” Sherlock hazarded. John’s face did not quite reveal amusement, but it did not quite reveal anything else, either.

“A bit,” John admitted. “You’re… expressive.”

Sherlock blinked, surprised. “Not something I’ve heard before,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah, well,” John said. “Maybe other people aren’t really looking,” and before Sherlock could fully analyze that, along with the curious look on John’s face, the caverns opened up entirely into what appeared to be an entire underground _city_.

“Aquifer bed,” John said, apparently correctly interpreting Sherlock’s searching look. “Well, it was an aquifer bed. Now it’s… not so much.”

“So I see,” Sherlock said.

The ghostly images which had seemed so absurd in the desert were brought to life, here, stark and unutterably real. The bed sloped constantly downward, and, in rings around the center were towering crystal constructs, interspersed with mushrooms so large, they seemed to have been carved away into dwellings. Metal contraptions clattered along, some functioning as lifts and others… Sherlock could not immediately divine their function, but watched in fascination as they ticked along, never halting. He also could not immediately intuit the power source or the engine which ran them, but that would come with study.

So distracted was Sherlock that he did not realize their party had come to a halt, until John said, “Well, here we are.” Sherlock snapped back to attention - he had been separated from his fellows, at some point, and now stood in front of one of many towering mushrooms, in a ring nearly half-way down the slope of the bed.

“You’ll stay here,” John said. Sherlock blinked at him, in surprise.

“You are not imprisoning me,” he said.

“You going to run away?” John said. “Because good luck finding the surface, again.”

“No,” Sherlock said because any attempt to leave would be sheer folly. “But I could sabotage anything I took the mind to.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Know how everything works, then?” he said.

“Not yet,” Sherlock said. “But I will learn.”

“Well, let me know when you’ve got that all figured out, then,” John said. “And I’ll lock you up, after.”

“You are an absurd human being,” Sherlock said.

“Guess we’re a matched set,” John said, then simply walked away leaving Sherlock to stare after him and then to sort through the utter nonsense that was his apparent dwelling.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock dreamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was not at all what I meant to finish first, but it is what I've got for you. I have mentioned in the past that I've got y'know pretty bad ADD, which probably explains my scattershot manner of writing. Also this now comes with a playlist! Which I am not going to directly link from here because that might get the AO3 in trouble somehow. But I am just saying, if you looked for this username over on Dreamwidth, you might find free music there. Maybe. I couldn't say for certain. Also I'm sorry for being a bitch and ending this with a cliffhanger. Sometimes these things happen guys. Especially with me.

The city was quiet and impenetrably dark. Night was unnaturally imposed here - or, perhaps, day. Her residents slept as one in hours when the mushrooms ceased their glow, like the sun going down aboveground, only here there were no stars or moon to soften the darkness, just pitch-black night.

Sherlock dreamed.

The manor was quiet but not empty. Sherlock was seven, and his footsteps crunched across leaves blown through the window. He ducked behind billowing curtains, sneaking between the shadows, not so subtle as he thought, not quite so artful in childhood as he was in adulthood. In the last room down the hall, flickering candlelight touched coyly on the marble floor, and voices drifted through the doorway.

“Not yet,” Mummy said. “Not yet. He’ll grow up soon enough.”

Sherlock paused outside the doorway, pressed against the wall, listening.

“How long do you expect to keep him in the dark?” someone said - someone whose voice Sherlock did not recognize, soft and lilting, foreign as the fruit sometimes delivered to the marketplace, that Mummy bought as prizes. “He’s cleverer than the rest of us put together.”

Sherlock cocked his head to one side.

“I know,” Mummy said. “But he’s a boy. He’s far too young. Only seven. Hardly even a boy,” and Sherlock blinked, leaning closer to the door. Him, they were talking about him. When he peaked around the door, he saw Mummy sitting at her vanity, with its burnished mirror, holding her compass in her hands. He could not see whether the hand spun or was settled. She sighed, and set it on the vanity table.

“Another year,” she said. “Give me another year.”

A man standing behind her, in the shadows, sighed, heavily. “A year,” he said. “But no more than a year.”

The scene shifted, in that dreamy, impossible way that came with sleep.

Sherlock stood beside Mycroft in the graveyard. He was seven and a half, which was practically an adult, wearing garments sewn for mourning. Men were shoveling dirt into a fresh grave, over a casket, which held what was and wasn’t Mummy. Sherlock scrubbed a hand across his face. He wasn’t crying he was just… he wasn’t crying.

Mycroft set a hand on his shoulder, and when Sherlock looked up at him, his face was lined. He looked like Father. Or the Father that Mummy had always described. Sherlock had never known him. He looked back at the grave, slowing filling in, and took a shaky breath. He threw down the flowers he was holding and ran.

“Sherlock!” Mycroft called after him, but he didn’t stop. He ran. He ran until he reached the manor. He ran until he was standing in Mummy’s room. He panted for breath, but didn’t stop there. He climbed up onto her vanity bench. Her compass was resting on the table, and he picked it up. The hand spun constantly, then settled. Sherlock sat down on the bench and watched it trembling into place.

“I’m going to find out what you meant,” he said, even though no one was there to hear him, especially not Mummy.

Sherlock woke, suddenly.

The mushroom was glowing again, lighting up the interior of the house and, when Sherlock rolled out of bed and went to look, the exterior of the cavern. He scrubbed one hand over his face and made a high, aggravated noise in the back of his throat. He had not dreamed of that in… years, though he would be lying if he said he had not thought of it.

“Bugger it all,” he said, looking out the window. Below the city’s residents with their winding tattoos walked the streets or shuffled sleepy-eyed out of their houses. He turned towards the table on which he’d set his compass - Mummy’s compass, really. Walking over, he found the needle ever spinning - it had not settled since he’d reached the city.

“Bugger it all,” he said, again, then snatched it up off the table, and stalked out of his implausible house, onto the streets.

#

Though the aquifer was mostly drained, pools of water still gathered in places around the cavern, beside houses and on the streets. Sherlock often saw children playing around them. The first time he saw one jump into a puddle only to be fully submerged, he… well, he went to inspect for himself.

The children scattered upon his approach, but did not leave, watching him from the safe distance of several body lengths, whispering among themselves. He ignored them, as he bent to inspect the pool. When he reached his hand in, he easily touched the bottom.

“Hm,” he said, withdrawing his hand. His arm was not even wet to the elbow.

Suddenly, he saw a swarm of blackbirds in the pool’s reflection and looked up. They flocked overhead, then split apart, settling in several different sections of the city.. As a number swarmed in his direction, the ghosts appeared again. He did not even look at them, this time, but watched as the blackbirds touched the ground.

A sudden blinding flash of light. Sherlock threw one arm across his arm, too late to avoid being blinded.

When he blinked the impressions of light away, John was standing over him. The blackbirds were gone.

“Doing a bit of poking around?” John said.

“Your city makes no logical sense,” Sherlock said.

“Good thing we’re not trying to run it on logic, then,” John said.

“As far as I can tell,” Sherlock said, “You might as well be running it on magic.”

“Funny story about that,” John said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUSPENSE. (Sorry~ but the next part is mostly written, so. You shouldn't have to wait long.)


End file.
